It is thus clear that both parties courted the co-operation of the Indians, and employed them to the utmost of their power; and therefore one party has no just ground of reproach against or advantage over the other party for the inhuman policy of enlisting the Indians in their cause, though the British had larger means and greater facilities in securing this savage co-operation.
It has been alleged, and no doubt truly, that the American commanders restrained the cruel and plundering propensities of the Indians, and the English commanders did the same; but neither the English nor the Americans were always able to control their Indian allies on or after the day of battle. American writers have, however, charged the outrages of the Indians in the English army, and scouting parties, to the sanction of the British generals,[80] and the prompting of the British Loyalists, and some English writers have reiterated the charge. The employment of the Indians at all was against the judgment of both General Burgoyne and Sir Guy Carleton,[81] and only submitted to in obedience to the King's authority. As early as the 11th of July, 1776, Burgoyne (while pursuing his enterprise from Montreal to Albany) complains as follows of the conduct of the Indians to the Secretary of State: "Confidentially to your Lordship, I may acknowledge that in several instances I have found the Indians little more than a name. If, under the management of their conductors, they are indulged for interested reasons in all the caprices and humours of spoiled children like them, they grow more unreasonable and importunate upon every new favour. Were they left to themselves, enormities too horrid to think of would ensue; guilty and innocent, women and infants, would be a common prey."[82]
While the Indians were an incumbrance to Burgoyne's army during his whole campaign, and forsook him in the eventful hour when he most needed them, their barbarities contributed greatly to swell the revolutionary army, and to alienate great numbers of Loyalists, weakening Burgoyne's army in the very country where he expected most support from the inhabitants, and giving the American general, Gates, a great preponderance of strength over him—the army of Burgoyne being reduced to 3,500 men fit for actual service, while that of Gates was increased to upwards of 16,000 fit for actual service.[83]
But if the British exceeded the Americans in gaining the greater part of the Indians to their cause, and the corresponding disgrace and disadvantage of their accompanying the army, the Americans far outdid the English and the Indians themselves in the work of desolation and destruction. Dr. Ramsay remarks:
"The undisturbed tranquillity which took place in South Carolina and the adjacent States after the British had failed in their designs against them in the spring and summer of 1776, gave an opportunity of carrying war into the Indian country. This was done, not so much to punish what was past, as to prevent all future co-operation between the Indians and British in that quarter. Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia sent about the same time a considerable force, which traversed the Indian settlements, burned their towns, and destroyed their fields of corn. Above 500 of the Cherokees were obliged, from want of provisions, to take refuge in Florida, and were fed at the expense of the British Government."[84]
It is to be observed that this was not an invasion of the white settlements by the Indians, but an invasion of the Indian settlements by the whites; it was a "carrying war into the Indian country;" it was not provoked by the Indians, but "was done to prevent all future co-operation between the Indians and British in that quarter." Yet this war of invasion, this war of precaution, was also a war more destructive to the Indians than any which they, even under the French, had inflicted on the white colonists; for not an Indian cornfield was left undestroyed, nor an Indian habitation unconsumed.
FOOTNOTES:
[70] The royal historian, Dr. Andrews, says:
"The colonies were particularly exasperated at the introduction of foreign troops into this quarrel. They looked upon this measure as an unanswerable proof that all regard for their character as Englishmen was fled, and that Great Britain viewed them as strangers, whom, if she could not conquer and enslave, she was determined to destroy. This persuasion excited their most violent indignation; they considered themselves as abandoned to plunder and massacre, and that Britain was unfeelingly bent on their ruin, by whatsoever means she could compass it.
"While the colonists represented this measure in so sanguinary a light, it was depicted at home in the same colour by their partisans. It was even reprobated by many individuals who were not averse to the other parts of the Ministerial plan, but who could not bring themselves to approve of the interference of foreign mercenaries in our domestic feuds.